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Hey,

OK, Here is the background. Years ago I started with DTV and purchased a nice RCA DRD202RA and a Single LNB 18' Dish. I later decided to add a RCA DRD302RA and went to a Dual LNB. When I moved houses 2 years ago I decided to put a reciever in the master bedroom and the family room. I got 2 RCA DRD420RE and my installer decided to add a second 18' dish on the roof. Since then, I went and purchased a QuadLNB for my 18' and got one more RCA DRD420RE for one of the kids rooms. Also in that time, I began to do installations myself as I went and got Dish Network for the alternative channel lineup, I did a pretty good job peaking the signal and cleaning everything up with a Dish500. To get DNET's international stations off of the 61.5 location, I took the Dual LNB I had for DTV and repointed it. I also went out and purchaesd a 3x4 Terk Multiswitch and took 2 of the Quad LNB feeds into the 3x4. All worked fine and I was getting signal strength in the 80's. So I was out at the local fleamarket in the Spring and saw a Phase III DTV dish on sale for $40 (it was a blowout sale as the Fleadmarket was closing down at the end of the week, so everyone was blowing out their invintory). I took the 18' dish down and put up the PhaseIII. It took forever to aim, I would hit the 101 but not the 110/119 or the 119 but not the 101/110. I was about to give up until I went to THIS Look Angle Website. What I did was said Echostar 20' and said 101 and 119 dish. It gave me a skew and angle and it wound up hitting all 3 satellite's!!! After a little tweaking and peaking all was good. Now the 420 recievers are DTV+ recievers and therefore when I plugged them straight into the LNB I got a signal strength for all 3 recievers. The other 2 recievers are standered DTV recievers and were reciving strong 101 signals. The main problem was the Phase III dish only has 4 Outputs and I needed 5. So I went out and purchased a 5x8 Terk Multiswitch. Put the 4 LNBs into the Feeds and put the 5 Recievers into the Recievers Output. However, I was very upset as the thing didn't power properly. I returned it for a Full Return + Additional Funds from the online dealer I purcahsed it from and decided to go and purchase it from a local dealer. I got another Terk 5x8 and it appeared to be a newer model. I called out a friend I made who is a Professional Installer, wanting to make sure that this would work. Unfortuantly, I was getting feeds ranging from 30-98 and some transponders were droping. 3 of the 5 recievers were reciving signals as well. 2 of the DTV+ RCA 420 recievers and the RCA 320 reciever. Furthermore, my friend had mounted the 5x8 on the 2nd partion of my roof, which isn't easily accessable without an long extention ladder. I called the supplier, knowing that he was leaving on a vacation, like myself, for 7 weeks. He said that when we both got back from our vacations, we would be able to deal with it. So that leads to todays actions. I was finally able to get my friend to come back and unmount the 5x8 Terk. I went to Radioshack and had purchased a Female-to-Female Coax Barrel so that I would at least be able to connect 4 of the 5 recievers for the time being. Unfortuantly, Radioshack only had 3 of these devices. What they did have was a 2GHZ 1 by 2 Splitter. So I came back and hooked 3 feeds directly into the reciever and then 2 feeds via the Split. Much to my dismay, the signal strength was still not workering properly. I saw a little bit of a boost in signal but mostly nothing major. 4 of the 5 Recivers are now working, with only one of the RCA 420's not getting a signal. However, the older recievers dont seem to get as many Transponders compared to the 420's.

So now I don't know what I am going to do. I was thinking of going out and relaying ALL of the wires to RG6 (as some of the wire are RG 59, but the RG 59 wires are getting signals (one to a 420 and one to the 320)!!! It is a RG6 that isnt getting anything BTW). Alternativly, I was thinking maybe the satellite shifted but when I was up on the roof today, we went and shook the dish and the thing is extrenly tight.

What is my next step for next weekend when I want to finish this entire process? With the winter, unfortuantly, fast approcaching I would like to get it done in the next week or two as there may not be many more warm, dry weekends before the rain and cool temperatures start to come. I am almost willing to go out and put back the Quad LNB with a 3x4 Multiswitch before the Winter so that I don't have to worry about this.

What would you suggest I should start to do? What kind of testing can I do to figure out what I need to do? I am just very few up and would love to get everything working...

These older RCA recievers, they SHOULD still get the 101 without any problems, just no the the 110 or 119, which is fine with me.

Where should I begin?

BTW: You may ask why I have taken so long in the process. Well as I said, I took a nice long summer vacation and with the Dish Network satellite we still can order the PPVs we want and I still have basic cable for all the TV's. However, I perfer DTV over everything so I would like to go out and fix the entire process...